It appears that the only notable changes in this update were
exclusive to the interface for Offline Playback, and specifically just
to the download dialog. There are a few modifications worth looking at.
The first is an updated naming convention for video quality, which
abandons the "common" names (i.e. Normal and HD). This makes the options
much more visually appealing since they won't be displayed with
different lengths in a jagged stack. YouTube's engineers are also off
the hook for making up (and translating) those common names for the
various quality levels that may be added in the future. Of course, this
means slightly less meaningful labels for users that don't naturally
comprehend video quality levels; but this is a pretty easy concept for
people to adapt to, so it shouldn't be a problem.Each quality level is now also adorned with its size printed on the right side of the dialog. There's no need to play it safe by picking small videos because we're afraid of the impact of a larger one, we now know exactly how much space we're committing to. But if I can make one suggestion to Google, it's that the dialog should also let us know how much space we have available.
The final addition comes in the form of a new option for offline
quality: 144p. It goes without saying that video at such a low
resolution is visually terrible to watch, even on a small phone screen;
however, it has the advantage of consuming very little space – about
half the size of a 360p video. This is a good option for anybody that
doesn't care much about video, but needs to have the audio track, which
describes a lot of music and podcast listeners. An APK Teardown back in
May revealed that an audio-only option is due to appear, but it seems to still be on hold, for now. In the meantime, YouTube is making the point that 144p video may have a place on hardware other than smartwatches.Sign up here with your email
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